Good things come to those who wait. That said, patience may be the hardest part of buying a house in Spain.

A buddy of mine was telling me how he and his wife had bought an apartment in Istanbul in just 48 hours. They typically do not do inspections, people don’t tend to use lawyers or real estate agents, and the paperwork takes just hours to complete. Buying a house in the U.S. can be done in a month if all goes well. But, in Spain, three months is the norm. And, for us, it will be more like nine months. Yes, about the same amount of time as it takes to have a baby…

First, there was a whirlwind trip to Spain to view the property. Every part of this took much longer than I had expected. Even viewing the property took the better part of two hours as it involved a great deal of conversation and a nice cup of tea with the owners, a lovely British couple.

Setting up a power of attorney required that the notary not only certify that both our lawyer and I signed the paper, but required her reading the entire five-page document out loud while the real estate agent translated it into English, and I nodded my head in agreement and signed multiple times. This, while time-consuming, was fast in comparison to opening a Spanish bank account, which took nearly two hours, and that was with the real estate agent’s wife having held a place in line for us.

That’s when the real work began for our lawyer. She spent almost a month checking the property for legal issues. We also had a survey done by an architect (two weeks) and had the property tested for radon gas (three weeks), though the actual test only takes four days.

With each step, we held our breath for the results. Any problem might mean that we couldn’t or wouldn’t want to buy the house. But, everything turned out fine. And, after that, the contract was drawn up and signed. Only then, did we pay the 10% downpayment. From the time we first saw the property online to the signing of the contract was nearly three months.

But, this was just the beginning of the process. As I understand it, Spanish law states that the contract must be completed within three months of signing (for repairs, multiple documents, securing a loan, etc.). Our contract has an added one month extension to this in order for some missing paperwork to be completed. This is the now infamous Certifiacado de asimilado a fuera de ordenación!

And, we’re still waiting on that…

So, although we decided to purchase the property in November, 2016, we won’t actually be able to use it until June 2017. If the provisions of the contract are not met by June, 2017, we will get double our downpayment back, but we won’t get the house, and that would be especially heartbreaking since we’ve already waited so long…

-S